smoth wrote:Athmos you exagerate the severity of the changes made to springs lua Interfaces.The tex alignment issue was more about standards than actual broken stuff

Well I indeed have little knowledge of what happened to Lua in the recent years and things might have settled down quite a bit. The text allignment issue simply was the thing that (at least for me) was most memorable as it came out of the blue and many felt like treaded on their feet. It also sort of fits into the discussion as this was quite a "top-down-decision" and so it at first sight sounds strange that for many years now nobody managed to step forward and introduce the "definite way" of how to tell which engine version the game needs and how to hand over this information to the lobby which then can fire up the right executable...

In the end the Lua example also is only part of the problem - pretty much any area of the engine did and probably to this day does undergo changes. What right now prevents my old MA version from starting probably is the switch to a Lua based system for placing / choosing the starting unit and setting the general game settings. Another example as far as I understand is the pathfinder. While not being a showstopper it seems you really have to throw in a few tweaks in order to prevent annoying unit behaviour...

But oh well - I actually don't want to turn this into an extensive "What did change and what had to be adapted to in the past?" discussion. In the end I see it this way: It's totally fine to break certain things in a new version by the means of improving the engine. It's just a bad idea to force these changes on everyone and everything. As I said before: Developing a system that asks for the engine version to use and a lobby handling multiple engine versions installed on the system is no rocket science and actually should be a piece of cake in comparison with messing around with the pathfinder or working on a new map format. As those advanced types of issues are being worked on there definitely is quite some skill in the ranks of the developers - unfortunately it doesn't seem to get the priority it (in my opinion) should have. The need for "eternal patching" simply is one of the most unlovely things you can force a potential developer to...

a system that asks for the engine version to use and a lobby handling multiple engine versions installed on the system

As said, if you only play online and on autohosts, it already works like that.

The need for "eternal patching"[of games required]

I think in the history of spring that was not given so much attention, for various reasons:
-The quality of games was constantly improving, at least the graphics.
So there was a bit thinking like "What does a two year old mod (or mod version) matter, we have much better now."
-There were enough modding people who did not seem to mind working on the same project for years: The most popular games trace back to the beginning of spring. Most games had releases much faster than engine, so adapting a few things was never that big a problem.
-Playerbase is small and beside BA&zK for all other games it is currently formed around the developers. (as in almost every played match has a dev playing/spectacting or they advertise etc) So if the developers abandon/pause their work, the players leave too.

In the long term yes. In the upcoming release most certainly not. The Krogoth is meant to be the final form of the commander. The commander itself in MA is going to be a bit different from what he is like in e.g. BA or even the original Total Annihilation. He now can be upgraded when reaching a new tech level and thus gets upgrades in terms of weapons, health or special abilities. In the end it's about keeping one's commander alive in team games if you want to unlock certain "super units". This was done in order to give some more tactical potential - you still can sacrifice a commander in a combomb maneuver which might especially be appropiate in team games but if you do so you won't get access to those special units - it's up to you to decide which way fits your situation better. Actually those units (or better buildings) are the Vulcan/Buzzsaw i.e. a rapid firing Big Bertha (which still can be overcome with enough shields) or the nuclear cannon which pretty much delivers nukes anywhere and doesn't care about shields (it's way more expensive than the Vulcan/Buzzsaw and takes longer to build though). In other words: It's all about game enders here as when your game has spiraled up into the T3 state it's about time to give some special options to finish things while also delivering some feeling of satisfaction when using those things...

The Krogoth will fit in here just fine. It will be the final upgrade for a commander which turns him into a Krogoth. He will loose all his construction capabilities but will turn into a hell of a combat unit. A unit with quite a special ability / weapon that should be quite interesting to use (especially in games where losing the commander / Krogoth means defeat)...

The Krogoth might show up in the follow-up version of MA though. The upcoming release primarily was focusing on finetuning the things that already were there and especially extending the entire naval sector which is about things like the underwater advanced tidal generator (so sea players have something like the advanced solar too which also isn't that exposed to enemy attacks as it now is underwater), about two additional units to the T1 and T2 factories and especially some more love to the T3 sea sector which was a bit rudimentary and especially lacked buildings (e.g. an underwater anti-nuke launcher). With the new units which (as always in MA) won't be just there to have simply "more" but will fit into certain roles that aren't really represented yet, the general course of slightly more diversity between the Arm and Core faction will continue to be seen in the naval sector making naval combat more attractive / interesting...

I fired that one up yesterday and it also has the idea of upgrading your commander. Is that what you meant or is there another aspect I should have a look at? The general idea of the upgradeable commander isn't something new in MA. What is "new" though (and already was integrated in the unreleased V1.2 version) is that initially there just was one commander upgrade at T3. When playing the game it turned out though that the step was way too steep from the T1 com to an upgraded commander on T3. That's why I did introduce a second upgrade at T2. So in the end it'll be about a com upgrade at both T2 and T3 and finally the Krogoth transformation (if the player wishes to as the commander in the conventional sense then is lost in favor of a pure combat unit without construction capabilities)...

Once the Krogoth is implemented it will be the final transformation for both Arm and Core. I have an idea for a final Arm commander transformation but it's not really fleshed out yet and I guess now is not the time to think this through. The general idea though is not to do another Krogoth thing in terms of an extremely powerful combat unit but more something which relies on certain special abilities rather than brute force...

I fired that one up yesterday and it also has the idea of upgrading your commander. Is that what you meant or is there another aspect I should have a look at? The general idea of the upgradeable commander isn't something new in MA. What is "new" though (and already was integrated in the unreleased V1.2 version) is that initially there just was one commander upgrade at T3. When playing the game it turned out though that the step was way too steep from the T1 com to an upgraded commander on T3. That's why I did introduce a second upgrade at T2. So in the end it'll be about a com upgrade at both T2 and T3 and finally the Krogoth transformation (if the player wishes to as the commander in the conventional sense then is lost in favor of a pure combat unit without construction capabilities)...

Once the Krogoth is implemented it will be the final transformation for both Arm and Core. I have an idea for a final Arm commander transformation but it's not really fleshed out yet and I guess now is not the time to think this through. The general idea though is not to do another Krogoth thing in terms of an extremely powerful combat unit but more something which relies on certain special abilities rather than brute force...

I mentioned it also because of the commander, but also because almost every idea you mention is in there in some shape or form. So it might be worth checking out how they were implemented there so you can take the best ideas from it.

What still needs to be done is texturing of the advanced tidal generator, modelling & texturing of 2 new units and finally porting the game to the latest Spring engine version. I thus wouldn't expect a release any time "soon". I'll give some updates as things proceed...